Craft How to make a simple scandinavian winter wreath garland for table decoration at Christmas (1)

I don’t know about you, but everything’s been a bit of a whir recently. So, today I’m just dropping in with a quick post on a simple candle wreath I made a few days ago. It’s not so much of a how-to, more of a small suggestion of something simple to decorate the table with during the festive season.

I love a winter garland and have developed a few favourite pieces of foliage that I return to during this season time and again. I love both green and white or green and blue as colour combinations and find that I’m drawn to them in foliage too. Green and white feels like the perfect advent colour combination so I’ve stuck to these colours, however when you strip back on colour you need to up your game a little on texture, so I have made sure there’s a variety of structured, fluffy and dainty within this arrangement.

We aren’t hosting Christmas Day here so I’ve made something small and subtle, but I could see this working equally well on a much larger scale. I would have liked to have done an advent display with a candle for each week but this triple candlestick I bought a while ago in H&M felt like the perfect centrepiece and I didn’t want to buy something new in.

The foliage I have used is pine, eucalyptus, pussy willow and cotton flower stems, all of which are readily available at this time of year. Start with your foliage, the bulkiest first, for me this was pine, followed by eucalyptus. I had been using really thick floristry wire on previous wreaths and found this much thinner version far easier to use (and gentler on hands!) so I include the link from Amazon if you are in need of wire. Lay your pieces of foliage on the wreath in sections overlapping each end with a fresh piece of foliage. Once you are happy with the shape (I don’t like to keep mine too uniform or symmetrical) attach with floristry wire.

Next I added the pussy willow, this is quite un-malleable but I recommend gentry trying to bend a curve on it before attaching to soften the tension on the wire. Last up dried cotton flowers cut from their stems, this can be a little fiddly but I think it adds a nice layer to the shape.

That’s it, a very simple table decoration. As it’s not too Christmass-y I will be using it well into the new year. What do you like to have on your winter or Christmas table?